Death happens. Why not make it interesting?
The online competition to guess which famous people won't make it to the end of the current year. If they're elderly, ill, or just live a high-risk lifestyle, stick 'em in your team, and for each one whose death you correctly predict, you'll score points. DDP was dreamt up in Derby, England (hence the name...) by Big Iain back in 1996. Other hosts: Siegfried Baboon and Rude Kid (2003-7), Octopus of Odstock (2008-9, first tenure), The Man in Black (2010-17), Spade Cooley (2018-19), msc (2020-21), Grim Up North (2020-22), Reptile (2020-23), and Death Impends (2022-2025). Now the Committee of Banana (2023), time (2024), the returning Octopus of Odstock (2026) and the deadpooling equivalent of a gap year temp Marlfox (2026) oversee the biggest deadpool going...
FORBIDDEN COLOURS: ALL EXCEPT BLUE Innovative Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto has died aged 71. From a young age, he devoured all kinds of media from conventional to experimental, and cited Debussy and John Cage as key influences. In the late 70s, he co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yukihiro Takahashi (died January 2023) and Haruomi Hosono […]
SOD’S LAWSON Nigella Lawson’s dad has been duly cooked. The creatively-named Nigel Lawson apparently had claims to fame in his own right. He was the financial brains of the Thatcher administration, first as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and most prominently as Chancellor of the Exchequer. From there, he propagated tax cuts to help give […]
JAFFEE FOLDS IN Is this an obituary for longstanding Mad magazine wiz Al Jaffee we’re reading here? “Not if you turn your head around.” “No, you’re reading Scott Thorson’s.” “It’s his life story, only with a death date added.” This isn’t working. We’ll have to defer to his trusty Fold-In to figure out […]
MURDERER. SHE WROTE. A crime novelist with true grisly bona fides, Anne Perry has died aged 84. Perry worked her way through various mundane jobs before hitting it big with her series of Victorian detective novels. Her two most popular protagonists were Thomas Pitt and amnesiac William Monk, who had a combined 50+ novels between […]
QUANT TICKED Fashion icon Mary Quant has been shorted aged 93. The bobbed designer came of age through years of stodgy WWII-era women’s outfits and rebelled against this with a chic-yet-fun style. Her miniskirts and hot pants, among many other short garments, helped define the freewheeling spirit of the Swinging Sixties. She later primarily focused […]
NUREMBURIED Last surviving Nuremburg prosecutor Ben Ferencz has died aged 103. The Transylvania-born Ferencz fled with his family to New York when he was ten months old to escape from the antisemitism infesting Romania. He studied law, joined the Army in WWII, and was selected to investigate liberated concentration camps (most notoriously Buchenwald) to gauge […]
JAWS OF DEATH Cinematographer Bill Butler has died aged 101. He was most renowned for his work on Jaws, where his task would prove extra important amidst the struggles getting the mechanical shark to work. His camerawork conveyed the shark’s looming terror very effectively without needing to have it on screen. Other films he worked […]
IAN, THE SKY Oh, oh, oh, it’s tragic, you know. Veteran guitarist Ian Bairnson has died aged 69. Working as a session musician, a stint with Pilot caught the attention of the band’s onetime producer, Alan Parsons. Bairnson would be a mainstay of the Alan Parsons Project throughout its 15-year duration, and was among several […]
MORE THAN SEDATED New wave guru Seymour Stein is on the road to nowhere, aged 80. Active in the music biz from an early age, he co-developed the Billboard Hot 100 in the late 50s and was active as an apprentice in the Brill Building corridors before splitting to his own ventures. He co-founded Sire […]
MRS. LYDON NOW ROTTEN Never mind the bollocks, here’s the obit. German Nora Forster was born to a wealthy publishing family and kept active as a music promoter. She worked with greats like Jimi Hendrix, and was particularly intertwined with punk, bankrolling the Clash and the Sex Pistols. The latter led to her marrying John […]
